


Specters

by Pyrate_Penguin



Category: The Libertines
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:08:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23365225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyrate_Penguin/pseuds/Pyrate_Penguin
Summary: Bilo and Biggles share some slurred thoughts on that strange thing their relationship is... with occasional help from some ghosts
Relationships: Carl Barat/Pete Doherty
Comments: 4
Kudos: 55
Collections: Peter and Carl fics to lift our spirits during self-isolation





	1. "...something to write down on pages of gold"

**Author's Note:**

> Looking through the prompts on tumblr I was caught by that "5 ghosts of actors" part in one of them and it all kinda deployed from that. Alas, there is no Scooby-Doo here, just alternating streams of consciousness from Carl and Peter and their attempts at dialogue with ghosts of writers and actors who give them relationship advice (or just snide commentary, really))  
> The rather fleeting guest-star of the first chapter is Arthur Rimbaud and its title is from his "A Season in Hell".  
> Sorry for all the mistakes in advance)

Carl rarely spent cockcrow hours of the morning sober and contemplating the nature of beauty.  
But that time he did precisely that, sitting in the kitchen in the transparent chilly gold of a rising sun. Peter was just now barely tossing asleep in the living room, vomiting through the night after some nasty gasoline he drunk "just not to be rude to those dead-charming old bikers who whistled at me on the corner...no, Carlos, they just wanted to compliment my, well, yOuR leather jacket I was wearing...how dare you to suggest they wanted ThAt".

Carl smirked to himself and sore tenderness rose to his throat. Well, any passer-by would think Peter to be irritatingly foolish or veiling a shot at easy money and drink,  
while you typical next-door romantic would readily gulp his cultivated columbine simplicity and ask for more.

It was just cultivated for the effect, wasn't it? Well, that was the thing that made him ponder, as Carl couldn't decide it for himself yet.  
As could be certified by some heartbroken girls, Bilo wasn't all gallant Peter Pan 24/7. He was usually carelessly snoring the morning after while it was he,  
"the dark dangerous one" Carl, whose tongue stumbled with awkward apologies as he listened to the girl's complaints and made her a pacifying cup of tea, promising "to give that Casanova from Teesdale Street a shove and make him call back". But who said that innocence was equal to courtesy? Isn't innocence carefree? Isn't it selfish and devil-may-care?...

Carl often wondered if all these girls bewitched by Peter's readings of Yeats in the pub was really so naive to see just this bucolic side of him.  
But at the end of the day, it didn't really matter if they were or not. The thing is, if you are so inclined due to some deviancy of rudimentary idealism still preserved, you would _want_ to believe. And Carl wasn't really that much different. Years later, he would be flattered and bewildered by the way random people were eager to collage their dreams with the band. Those pretty girls? They surely had their own stories to tell, and somehow they decided to tell them through the lens of this volatile romance he and Bilo had... well yeah Peter was a perfect icon for that type of myth-living. Especially at a distance.  
Carl, that sober-morning still obscure Carl needed something more to love him here and now.

If only things could be this two-dimensionally easy... Peter could mess around intentionally, or unintentionally... or he could play all this "biker-bears molestation pantomime" just to get revenge on Carl. Carl was seen with some well dressed, older gent in glasses?! At the coffee shop?! Well, Peter was sure to get dirty drunk, made some girlfriend leave him a hickey and then concoct a whole story about "those huge hairy hands just offering me a beer or two". Just because his friend had arranged Carl a meeting with a nice guy who worked at a record company for fuck's sake!...

So yeah, Carl was thinking of this little stunt that led to the fact that he was forced to wipe vomit and scrap Peter off the bathroom floor... And then Bilo had the audacity to make a whiny demand that Carl absolutely must soap-wash his face cause he was suddenly too embarrassed to explain what happened "in this state, Biggles, please, I need you to see me as presentable at least, if you can't see me as pretty!" Like Carl gave a shit, like if they didn't wake up in piss, blood, vomit, and god knows what a dozen times before...

If Carl had been drunk himself he would likely start a ramble and that in its turn would anger Peter and they would fuss on the broken tile and what not. But when Carl was sober he always harbored some introspective saddened compassion for all the drunks - which was strangely wise of him considering his otherwise short temper at any state. So he washed Peter's face and gave him a towel, and patched his bleeding lip with plaster and listened to his "Oh, Biggles, you are so good at nursing broken soldiers, my smarmy Jeeves, now let's sing Minnie the Moocher!" and dragged him to the couch. He thought that maybe he must have been angry, straight-jacketing Bilo in blankets to prevent his smooching onslaught, but there wasn't anything to be angry about, really. Well, it was all just classic Peter-nonsense, his strife for the mix of melodrama and filth, cheeky catch-up games and then sweaty hugs and kitty rubs, those wobbly arms with cartoonishly huge hands hugging him in strange waves. "Please, please don't leave me, Carlos... I'll save for a nice jacket too, hey, it will be flattering to reject me in public...The next suitor, the princess exclaimed!"

What ridiculousness... It was funny how Carl was never angry when it was sudden and farcical and totally ungrounded like this time. He would just recite Peter some preposterous movie line to suit his sudden role-play, or hug him back, or give him a cigarette and say "Of course I love you, you nut bastard". But when he knew he really did something fishy... Like leaving Peter alone for a couple of days, when, still drunk in the morning after the party he decided to go the countryside with that strange model and her boyfriend "just to see the cows, man!", and found out that her cozy farm was a shack from "Withnail and I". It had no phone and the tire burst and he couldn't come back... and then he finally did Peter was hysterical and catty, but Carl couldn't bring himself to apologize, he suddenly just snapped and yelled and gave a tirade on his right for privacy and spontaneity like "fuck off you are not my wife, isn't that what libertinage is suppose to mean" and so on. But in fact he missed Bilo like mad and wanted a peck on the cheek and that high-pitched cheery "Biggles!" cry. And a toast. And a cuppa. But yeah, sometimes he was just the stupid masochist who exercised his self-torturing by playing a sadist to others...

No, the alluring simplifying idea of innocence was just a joke, but if not innocence it still was spontaneity, untainted vigor, "shyness that was criminally vulgar", as The Smiths sang, 'cause secretly, in those sloppy murmurs and kissy-kissies it wasn't shyness at all. The platina of Peter's charm was unreal to peel off, no matter how sober,  
literally and metaphorically he tried to look at it all.

Maybe Carl loved him so acutely precisely because of Peter's double bluff... the way he looked so schoolboyish and under that lied the waspish cruelty of a seasoned whore only he was capable of, but then under that.. under that again was a true vulnerability, that wasn't rehearsed for others... well, his first one wasn't a total act either, but still...

Carl secretly relished the fact that his friend was always sharply witty when he was mad at him or when he tried to charm others for that matter, but when he desided to just _be_ with Carl, Peter was an utter mess of words, strange and feverish and grandma-sweet, like he took off the coat of his true vocation for him and hang it on the hook.

No matter what, there was more to that Bilo-cat still, and only he was privy to it, to this inner light that smoldered the rubbish of mundane vice we all have, that light that reflects on the surface fragmentary and makes some people attractive despite all things that are taboo to us, like...like despite being a fucking bloke!

Carl was almost laughing hysterically at himself as the thought entered his mind. Here, alone, he could admit to himself how paltry it was, his concern that Peter was a boy and his own stubborn conviction that you are not supposed to fancy boys when you are a boy yourself. But as with the nature of Peter's supposed innocence, it was all a very blurred affair.

Maybe because Peter was a boy, Carl sheepishly tried to explain his allure to himself in a high-brow manner in the first place. He didn't usually sophist-talked himself why he found that girl in the club attractive...It was peculiar how admitting he fancied Peter would be considered double-pansy, 'cause, well, Bilo wasn't particularly manly at all. It was one of those typical, yet really bizarre dude things. Somehow it was less gay to praise the beauty of a muscled guy in the gym locker room. There was some nobility of aspiring comradery in it. But openly lusting after some lanky, velvet-tongue sonneteer in lipgloss was atrocious. But why? Couldn't he be excused by the fact that Peter looked like a girl sometimes? And it was all the rage, isn't it? The weedy girls? Like Twiggy and Kate Moss and Edie Sedgwick, his personal favorite. No one complained that they didn't have the meat to squeeze, didn't they?... Why was the bony frame of his friend any different...

Oh, for Christ's sake! Carl started to hate the road his pure abstract musings on the nature of innocence led him... But, well, isn't innocence always beautiful? Can innocence be ugly? And, well, that is the nature of the thing. The first instinct when you sense innocence is to un-do it, to smudge it with lusty hands and brand it with your breath. And some ugly inner voice persistently whispered to Carl: _He would let you..._

Fuck it, maybe he really just thought Peter was pretty, why not. He had big eyes and wet mouth and those angles of a model if models were allowed to be really carefree about themselves and do what they wanted, he was smart and he was complicated and he was... he was himself.

It was embarrassing and painful to think about it all, really. Because Carl didn't have the definitions for any of that, definitely not for his half-denied desires. As they branded themselves romantics, words of sexuality weren't really on the front of their vocabulary. And those golden molds of classic beauty proven over the centuries? Rosy lips, starry eyes, unruly hair, and clever hands... Everything Carl used to concoct a basic idea of beauty. Well, Peter had all of those, didn't he? Was beautiful and sexy the same thing, though?...

-Je ne comprends pas pourquoi tu si triches! Oh, ces prudes anglais!

Agh?... Blimey!

Suddenly, Carl was drowsily shaken by the waggish slobbering of the french speech...And he proudly thought he was in the middle of the philosophical morning epiphany! Sober, mind crystal clear... Of course, he fell asleep, bugger! Only in his sleep french girls spoke to him... Well, after that incident, anyway...

But, of course, to add insult to injury it wasn't a girl even. It was a brisk, miniature chap who fidgeted on the edge of the kitchen counter, smoking a thin pipe with a haughty lip, his legs swinging so hectically, Carl thought, that in the middle of the motion one of them seemed to disappear... Huh...

-My french is très shit, speak english, s'il vous plaît - Carl grunted, jouncing the hair from his face with a phlegmatic shrug.  
-Merde!... Of course, as you please, sweetheart - the boy jumped down and strolled to Carl, crushing on the next chair and disgustedly glaring at his teacup - How do you all even drink that! Do you have absinthe?.... D'accord, trop tôt... Coffee? Le brio! I need some buzz to write, you know?

He cursed some more, then looked in the window, as if catching and drinking dry the same introspective calm the morning light already gave Carl. Finally, ruffling his nestling-fair hair with a palm that looked strangely coarse and old, he muttered:  
-What I was trying to say is that I don't understand what's really stopping you, mon ami savoureux. It's not like your poet is older, with irritable wife and balding skull. Mine is, but it is not me complaining here! What's your problem, hey? You should praise the muses for making your soulmate such a vibrant nipper of verse and greatness of the higher plains!

And as it was a dream, just a dream, where you can surely talk to apparitions of semi-familiar figures Carl mumbled back: "Well, sonny jim, I totally should, damn lucky, damn lucky I am indeed!"

At that, somewhere, so close and so far away, his sparrow-poet blissfully murmured in his sleep.


	2. The Right Profile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a little Peter intermission, more Bilo POV to come... Maybe
> 
> Named after The Clash song about Montgomery Clift - the second specter of the chapter.
> 
> The first one, conjuring a Duke Ellington song in the sink, is, well, your Silent Era flapper of choice, I guess.

It was hard to pinpoint what had really summoned them, those dating guru ghosts.

(And no, they weren't a dream!)

Nothing unusual had really happened. Peter was always like that, always casually thinking about the most stupidly blatant and syrupy romantic things he could do to confess his feelings for Carl. From time to time and in-a-matter-of-factly.

Like if they were drunkenly passing a pet-shop he may think of buying Carl a talking parrot who would recite him Shakespearing sonnets every morning at breakfast. And then shit all other the place... But having a parrot would add to an illusion that they were on a ship, a pirate ship, right?

Or maybe he could get a circus monkey to steal Carl bananas whenever he wanted one.

Or he could send his pics to every teen magazine in the country to enter all those The heartthrob of the month contests. All those sleazy wankers girls usually obsess over would be forgotten than the world would see his Prince Charming.

And naturally, he continued to write him sloppy love letters. Maybe he could write Jameson a proposition to print them line by line on caps of whiskey bottles so that Carl could collect them: "Mail us 20 caps and get a Doherty heart plus a year supply of booze!"

Well, yeah, stuff like that.

Of course, he didn't have any intention of acting on any of that. And when even if he would stumble upon a pickpocketing magic monkey, it could steal Carlos bananas and cigarettes without pointing at Peter and then folding its fingers into a heart, right?

So yeah, that night wasn't any different, no specific Carl-confessions were brooding. Biggles was out there, ushering the Old Vic. And stupid actors were reciting masterpieces of poems and prose not to him and beautiful women in mink and pearls weren't buying him champagne. Well, that's for the better probably 'cause he would be dead jealous. Anyway...

He was just swamping into the couch, sleepily watching Clark Gable confessing his love for Claudette Colbert to her stern father in It Happened One Night.

"Anyone who loves her would be crazy. But don't hold that against me. I'm a little screwy myself!"

Peter sighed. If only pesky relatives were his main concern. With the life they led their closet kin was the kitchen rats and those would happily come for the wedding cake. And if he would tumble into Carl's mom place and hysterically demand she made her criminally handsome son behave and love Peter back like a good boy she would probably just roll him a joint...

So he thought about that for a bit as the orchestra climaxed a Hollywood happy-ending in the background, dreamily sliding into a beer-soaked slumber.

And when he woke up his mind from now on was hosting open mic nights where any obnoxious dead bastard he fancied at some point was free to give him relationship advice. Aren't ghosts has better things to do?...

The first thing he felt was the edgy warmth of Biggles on him. He definitely got a gin or ten after work judging by the smell and decided to bunk on the couch or more precisely on Peter. His elbow was pushing against Peter's ribcage and the massive old belt he wore scratched the skin of his belly as Biggles shifted and muttered the tenth dream. It was suffocating, no-second-thought casually possessive and itchy. He couldn't like it more.

Yet Peter still was a proud bastard and letting Carl snore on him like he was some skinny rug was too much! He decided to shift and tickle and to wake Carlos up.

Or maybe he just really wanted to see those eyes shudder a little, get roughly rubbed and then squint at him with forget-me-nots blue. And it would be really nice to hear that mumble still hoarse with sleep and not tuned to sound more toffish than droll. And oh, those lips would pout and then smile blissfully, and then pout again in a pantomime of hangover and finally say "Mornin', Pigman"...

Oh, blimey, he did adore this boy so.

But before any of that could happen a blurry, black'n'white palm reached somewhere from behind and coiled a lock of Biggles' stylishly greasy hair around the finger.

Then a peppy tune rattled through the dirty dishes in the sink with "Ev'rything is hotsy-totsy now, Ever since I fell I'm on a carousel, I'm dizzy as can be, be, be".

And before Peter could question his sanity in a way that would definitely wake up Carl in a less than delicious manner, a lanky girl in a gorgeous silk bathrobe put a hand to his mouth.

And then on the fringe of her shining black bob cut, a ticker of pale letters emerged:

"Silence is the silver of screen, but the hindrance of life".

Then she smiled and let go: "We don't want to scare off such a bee's knees gent, aren't we?"

***

Soon Peter learned that the silent girl was the least of his problems. Her tactic seemed to be merely flying around Carlos and making various Betty Boop-like expressions of satisfied checking out which didn't differ much from the reaction of any living-breathing-talking bird that stumbled to their flat at some point or another.

Well, they didn't fly through the bathroom door to spy when Carlos took a shower, or envelop his bare shoulders and pinch his tiny nipples that made Biggles mumble something like "We should have paid for the heating, after all, I'm foocking freezing."

But still. Pretty basic stuff.

But when the other ones began to flock, all talkative bastards. And the nonsense their said made Peter pray really, really hard for them to be real actual ghosts, not fragmented metaphors of his psyche.

Well, at least the chatting ones had the decency to pop up only then Biggles was asleep...

So the nights were especially strange now.

Like that time they both were somewhat truly engrossed in Coronation Street and then suddenly Carl was fast asleep, his profile a peacefully breathing marble cut-out in flickering TV blue.

\- What a nose, hey? - sighed the stranger, materializing on the armrest and eyeing Carl's face meticulously.

The lad himself looked like a man who was once beautiful, but now resembled a poor wax copy of himself. His eyes were the terrifyingly bright blue, hair over-greased, suit wrinkled... And his nose too plaster-perfect to be real.

Visitor's demeanor was emotion-free, but his voice brimmed with trained exaltation: 

-Don't be jealous of his looks. You know, your beak isn't that bad.

-What? - Peter absent-mindedly scratched his nose and giggled in nervous amusement - I'm not jealous of Carl!

\- All that we want is just some unresolved version of ourselves, kid. - tattered beauty whistled.

\- Cut off this classic narcissus complex, your 1950s are showing!

Ah, well...

That was the thing Peter never understood. Well, he grasped it theoretically. He wanted the attention and awe Carl got sometimes. But he didn't want to be him.

He wanted attention.

And Carl.

And speaking of jealousy... he wanted people to be jealous that Carl is with him. And for this to happen he couldn't himself be the boy he wanted to brag about, yeah?

Well, maybe Peter was envious, just a little, more in aesthetic terms that rooted in his own insecurity.

Envious of the way all that beauty was compactly formed, Carl's body firm, not sharp like his own. 

Apart from his nose and his wit, there was nothing sharp about Biggles, really.

Soft yet strong curves, violent smoothness of that line his body twisted with at his lower back and the maddening mellowness of lips...

\- Oh, fuck, you are right, you are not jealous - the stranger said disapprovingly, lighting a cigarette - but you'd better be jealous than drooling all over his lap...

When Peter disgustedly curled up as if it could protect his thoughts the guest instructed further: "You know, it's a stupid thing to try and love a man. Believe me, I tried. Easier to find yourself a true friend, a girl like Lizzie, you know."

This thing didn't change much in 50 years apparently.

A couple of gay guys he knew was extremely close to some girls. Or just to other guys they didn't fancy. And they lusted after someone they couldn't really talk to.

The problem wasn't that he couldn't make himself want his best friend like Monty couldn't with Liz. The problem was precisely the fact that Carl was his best friend. And everyone acted as if you can only be properly close with a guy as only guys can be your soulmates and intellectual equals... And then expected you to chase girls for everything else.

As if those two things were so easily separate...

-You can buy someone to scratch that itch off, you know - the uninvited guest advised - Although judging by the state of the gutter you live in you're better to sell instead.

-Fuck off, Monty, just fuck off!

Peter boiled and started to hiss "And everybody says, 'He sure looks funny' " at the actor.

\- I would pay a buck, though, cowboy, especially for that... - the sad bugger backed off into the nothingness, casting the last longing gaze at Biggles.

Peter rushed for the beer.

Christ, all this nose-talk! Thank god Tony Hancock didn't drag and played out that sketch there he went into a reclusive sulk when a girl laughed at his nose.

Well, anyone who would try to save his stupid face by taking Carl's perfect hooter as a model for a nose job would just make a fool of himself. Every part of Carl was sweet and proper but only as long as they all were together to be his Carl.

Ridiculous, delightfully ridiculous disproportions of features...

Peter dared to caress Biggles' cheek with his knuckles. 

Then to follow the contour of his nose with the tip of the finger.

Then...

Then he tucked him up and hastily went to bed.

Thank God he didn't have a buck to pay anyone...

Something chirred in the darkness of the dirty room.

The car rushed outside.

The nights were especially strange.


End file.
